Talk:Paid In Full

Reviews

 * The Bookman, July 1925.
 * A lovable rascal wipes out all memory of his sins and goes out in a blaze of glory.


 * The Saturday Review of Literature, May 9 1925.
 * This tale is built upon a slight structure and offers a variation of the Enoch Arden theme. Denis Cradock was an engaging scamp, a personable rogue whose philosophy it was to live by his wits. He was capable of any form of deception, fraud, or cheating, only slightly relieved by generosity and an aversion to physical cruelty, willing to descend to the ultimate baseness of betraying women and leading his son astray. When he deserted his wife, Mildred, after a maritime disaster, she built up in her childrens' minds a "Legend" of a father who died heroically endeavoring to save others in order to erect a noble ideal for them to emulate.


 * When Denis returned to saddle himself upon Mildred, his son and daughters were past childhood's stage. There is a play of plot and counterplot, in which discerning Uncle Tony plays a part. It would be unfair to reveal how the innocent sweetness and charm of his daughter Molly, whom Denis had never seen, brings into action that speck of virtue that everyone possesses, and how by final renunciation and fatal bravery, Denis makes true the "Legend".


 * "Paid In Full" must be accepted frankly as intended merely to entertain and not to be received as credible. The devoted mother, Mildred, the manly son, Denny, with a single weak streak, the sane, but well balanced Joan, a typical member of the younger generation, the kindly and capable Uncle from India, are stock figures from the novelist's repertoire. The construction is a standard pattern and the machina is plainly visible, while the deus brings about the essential coincidences. The book, however, is thoroughly readable and interesting, written smoothly, and livened by a mild, genial humor, which is neither slap-stick nor subtle, by delightful dialogue at times becoming' epigrammatic, and by clever verbal chaffing and badinage. It is sentimental without becoming bathetic, and appeals to one's better emotions without stirring them deeply.


 * The Outlook, Sept 9, 1925.
 * Ian Hay is always cheerful. So is his polished villain in this book. When the scamp, a cowardly and disgraced British officer, trades on the patriotic American fervor at the outbreak of war to pocket much money contributed for the soldiers by fashionable audiences at his war talks, he is at least amusing. But when he is moved to remorse and death by seeing his little child for the first time the story drops into bathos of the real old Bowery Theater type.